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The Anti-Rightist Movement was a reaction against the Hundred Flowers Campaign which had promoted pluralism of expression and criticism of the government, even though initiation of both campaigns was controlled by Chairman Mao and were integrally connected. Going perhaps as far back as the Long March there had been resentment against "rightists" inside the CPC, for example, Zhang Bojun.[2]

The first wave of attacks began immediately following the end of the Hundred Flowers movement in July 1957. By the end of the year, 300,000 people had been labeled as rightists, including the writer Ding Ling. Future premier Zhu Rongji, then working in the State Planning Commission, was purged in 1958. Most of the accused were intellectuals. The penalties included informal criticism, "re-education through labour" and in some cases death.

One main target was the independent legal system. Legal professionals were transferred to other jobs; judicial power was exercised instead by political cadres and the police.

After Mao's death, many of the convictions were revoked in 1979. At that time, under paramount leader Deng Xiaoping, the country needed talent and experience to get the country moving economically, and subsequently the guilty verdicts of thousands of counterrevolutionary cases were overturned — affecting many of those accused of rightism and who had been persecuted for that crime the previous twenty two years.[3] This came despite the fact that Deng Xiaoping had been one of the most enthusiastic prosecutors of the movement during the "First Wave" of 1957.

Discussion of the Anti-Rightist Movement is currently subject to heavy censorship within China. In 2007, a ban was placed on the book The Past Is Not Like Smoke, by Zhang Yihe, whose father was persecuted as a rightist, due to its discussion of the Anti-Rightist Movement.

In its meeting at the beginning of the year, the Chinese Communist Party's Central Propaganda Department listed the Anti-Rightist Movement as a topic to be restricted in the media and book publications.

In 2009, leading up the 60th anniversary of the PRC's founding, a number of media outlets in China listed the most significant events of 1957 but downplayed or omitted reference to the Anti-Rightist Movement.[1] Websites were reportedly notified by authorities that the topic of the movement was extremely sensitive.[1]